Seductive imagery as integral element in the work-process of architect Aleš Prinčič

Ever since photography became widely used, architects have paid close attention to the photographic representations of their buildings. Richard Neutra, for instance, was known for bringing an entire truck-load of select furniture to the photographed site in order to make his architecture appear “as it should be”. Udine-based architect Aleš Prinčič is no less attentive to this process than was his famous American colleague. He not only sets the scene to be photographed but also stands behind the camera to make sure that the scene is captured from precisely the right angle, in precisely the right way. So it’s no surprise that in published photographs his buildings often appear highly seductive. However, in opposition to most other photogenic architecture, they often appear even more seductive on the actual site. Continuing the tradition of his fellow modernists Prinčič still draws by hand, or – more precisely – he thinks through fine pencil drawings in 1:1 scale, huge drawings that often cover his entire studio. In his design he pays particular attention to detailing, to the ways light enters the rooms, and – this is his speciality – to the treatment of the surfaces of his architecture. In renovations he dresses the existing interiors and exteriors in new layers of paint, sheets of glass or steel, thin plates of veneer, plastic, plexi glass or leather, and in new constructions he composes them out of these layers. It seems that for him architecture is first of all a cladding; only secondly is it a bearing structure – that scaffolding for the fine, sensuous surfaces which outline and define his spaces.
In this sense his architecture calls to mind the work of modernist architects like Alvar Aalto, that were constructed out of various textures and materials as three dimensional collages. But there is a significant difference between the two: While the rough textures of Aalto’s buildings invite our touch, while we feel compelled to caress them, as if this would only add to their strong material presence, Prinčič’s smooth and shiny surfaces seem to discourage any physical interaction – as if the traces of our fingers would sully their oily perfection. Little surprise then that one of his most successful projects is the facade renovation of the Union Brewery in Ljubljana, a project meant to be enjoyed on an exclusively visual. Surrounded by a high fence, the fine, pure-white skin of the building remains safely guarded from our dirty fingers.
Nor should it come as any surprise that Prinčič has succeeded particularly well in the recent design of a new hotel building. A hotel is, by definition, a place to which you cannot belong; no matter how long you stay there, you are always just a guest in it. This the place in which you needn’t be your usual self, where you can maintain a distance from anything connected with home, and herein lies one of its very special merits. As George Bernard Shaw so succinctly put it, “the great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life”. Prinčič’s recently completed hotel Clocchiati in Udine subscribes to this position exceedingly well. Not only because it is a peaceful refuge from the everyday reality, or because every room exudes a different, individual atmosphere so that we can choose it according to our mood or who we want to be that night – but because of the architecture at work here.

Entrance to the rooms is effected via an entirely black, narrow corridor, beautifully lit from above, to the large, heavy doors standing side by side in one long row. We enter and ascend a narrow staircase and finally enter an open space – the room proper – composed of reds and whites, golds and browns, or oranges and blues. This space is not defined by an enclosure of walls but by the folds, twists and turns in ornamental surface. The ornament is material. The views from the rooms are filtered through layers of greenery growing in front of the large windows, which too becomes part of the interior.
Here every detail is considered, every colour and texture meticulously selected, every piece of furniture custom-designed. So carefully composed these rooms appear as compact unified wholes to which nothing can be added or removed. They work as beautiful sets or scenes in which we, however, are invited to take part only as observers. And yet we know that they are hotel rooms, meant to be inhabited. This is where some of the seductiveness of Prinčič’s architecture stems; we know that his rooms are to be inhabited but there is something forbidding about them, something that stops us from really entering them, as if they exude and explicit warning: look, don’t touch!
Knowing that these rooms are meant to be inhabited – while at the same time believing that one cannot live in them – we presuppose that somewhere else there is such a place that can really be inhabited, that there exists something called ‘true home’. Prinčič’s hotel is thus a hotel example par excellence; as it is not home, it can serve as the perfect refuge for living the unfamiliar, for realising our fantasies.

Prinčič, of course, doesn’t need to spend any time in this hotel. He doesn’t need this hotel to realise his fantasies; he needs to photograph it.
It’s no coincidence that, like Neutra, Prinčič pays such close attention to photographing his architecture. Neutra once explicitly stated that the process of making architecture is not concluded when the building is built but when it is photographed. It seems the same holds true also for Prinčič: he is closely engaged in taking photographs of his architecture not simply to get them published and to enter architectural history, but to finally capture his architecture “as it should be”, to finally realise that perfect composition of sensuous surfaces that he initially imagined – to finally materialise that initial image, to possess it. Sitting in the hotel’s garden a few months after completion, Prinčič lays the photographs out on the table and offers – “not all of them are good, but for some, I can say ‘this is it’.

Author: Petra Čeferin
Portrait: Manca Juvan
Project images: courtesy Aleš Prinčič